


we tell no one

by BeStillMySlashyHeart



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Gen, M/M, Male-Female Friendship, Multi, POV Alternating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-19
Updated: 2020-06-19
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:35:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24800959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeStillMySlashyHeart/pseuds/BeStillMySlashyHeart
Summary: It was a knowledge that remained unsaid upon unspoken mutual agreement. They didn’t talk about it and they didn’t talk about why they didn’t talk about it but they both knew it. It was something that was only ever acknowledged in the moment and then promptly ignored thereafter, shadowed until the moment was upon them again.Blue and Ronan have the same taste in guys. They refuse to admit it.Also, soulmates.
Relationships: Henry Cheng/Richard Gansey III/Blue Sargent, Ronan Lynch & Blue Sargent, Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Comments: 11
Kudos: 236





	we tell no one

Thirty years ago, literally overnight, every person in the world woke up with a name, sometimes more than one, written on their body. In the years that followed, scientists provided no answers as to how they appeared or why. The only things that were known for certain was that the name matched that of a significant person(s) in their life and that it was impossible to remove the mark. 

Some flaunted their marks, eager to meet the person who would come to mean so much to them. Others hid it, unwilling to let a mysterious skin blemish dictate their lives. Still others, an increasing portion of the population, in particular the younger generation who had never known life without the marks, didn’t seem to particularly care. For them, there was no real weight to the marks, to the people whose names scarred their skin. If anything, young adults and teenagers seemed to revel in challenging the long held  fantasy idea that the names revealed a person’s other half, their soulmate in the strictest sense. Casual dating was on the rise and the market for quick and easy ways to hide a mark was booming.

To the best of her knowledge, Gansey was a part of the first group of people. But then, he had two names, both of which were scrawled across the backs of his hands. It was a difficult location to conceal, it was true, but he could have made an effort and Gansey never did. It was how Blue knew his name before he’d ever introduced himself; her name was splashed across the back of his right hand. Just like his name was inked along the underside of her upper arm.

Conversely, Adam seemed to be a part of the second. It was possible that Adam’s mark was simply conveniently located somewhere that was easily hidden by his clothes but he also never mentioned it. Whenever the subject of soulmarks came up, and they inevitably did no matter how much any of them professed to hate them, Adam shied away from it completely. In the few weeks they made an attempt at dating, Blue had tried to bring it up, just to gauge how he felt, and he’d shut her down cold. 

Henry’s were well guarded secrets. He had two, just like Gansey and Blue, but his were on his ribcage, easily hidden unless he wanted someone to see them. Blue had never broached the subject with him but then, he’d never brought it up either. 

Ronan professed to hate his, to hate the whole idea of soulmarks and soulmates, but Blue saw the look in his eyes when they talked about it. He was a closet romantic at heart, undoubtedly yearning for the chance to meet his named person, but would absolutely never admit to it. 

Blue was the exact opposite of Ronan. On the surface, she loved the idea of the marks, of having someone (or in her case, two someones) out there who you knew were meant for you. On the inside, Blue hated it. She hated the idea that some discoloration of her skin should in any way be able to dictate her life. The only thing that had a say in her life was her. Not her marks.

Which was how Blue found herself here, really. Because she had her marks, and she had the men that went with them, and she even found herself a little in love with both of them, and yet she had the compunction to prove the universe wrong. 

Somehow, proving the universe wrong meant scoping out guys at Nino’s with Ronan Lynch. Not that either one of them would admit to it even under pain of death, of course.

The bell of the door rang loudly over the din of the early Friday night crowd and Blue craned her neck to see the newest offering. “Ohh,” she whistled lowly. Ronan waited half a heartbeat before he turned to look. 

He hummed in approval. “Mark Andrews,” he offered. “Junior at Aglionby.”

Blue glanced out the window. “Car?”

“Porsche. Yellow.”

She hummed derisively. Ronan had somehow infected her with a slight,  _ slight _ , appreciation for cars. “Nice. Loses points for the color.”

“Mhmm.”

Blue pushed away from Ronan’s table. “He looks like he could use some help.” She ignored Ronan’s snort and hurried over to seat Mark Andrews. It was really a shame that she had to lead the way. 

“And?” She hissed as she passed by Ronan’s table to refill the drinks of the family sitting behind him. 

“Not bad. Seen better,” he shrugged. “You weren’t missing out.”

Blue groaned. The problem with being the hostess/waitress was that she never got to see the back view of the attractive customers, she was always stuck looking at their faces and letting them check  _ her _ out.

It was fifteen minutes of doing her actual job before she had a moment to rejoin Ronan. She arched an eyebrow in question. Ronan sipped his drink and nodded his head at the table to the right of the door. Blue followed the motion to find a guy from her history class. “Alex Waters. Nerd. On the track team.”

“I can tell.” It was a warm day and Alex had clearly come straight from practice without changing, his tiny shorts displaying his long legs and a small red scrawl around his knee. Both Blue and Ronan ignored the ink. 

They shared a smirk before blithely ignoring each other in favor of scoping out Alex. Their game, if it were, only worked so long as they refused to acknowledge just what they were doing. Because while Blue and Ronan somehow had the  _ exact _ same taste in guys, neither one of them wanted to admit to it or do any kind of soul searching to find out just what that said about them. So every now and then, when the others weren’t around, they’d commiserate over the annoyingly attractive guys that populated the world around them. They both had soulmates, Blue had already found hers, but neither one of them cared. Or, they ignored the part where they maybe cared. Possibly a lot. 

Adam was meeting them after his shift and Gansey and Henry had gotten sidetracked at Monmouth looking into something Blue didn’t understand so Ronan held their table and Blue stopped by as often as she could to comment on the crowd. They’d made their way through seven guys before the door opened and they both made audible noises of appreciation. 

No matter that Blue had her own soulmates who were her friends, no matter that they had tried to date and realized it would never work, the truth was that she found Adam attractive. And sometimes, like when he showed up straight from work a little sweaty and a lot messy with faint oil streaks on his hands and neck, she found him  _ very _ attractive. It was only occasionally a problem.

The good news, of course, was that it wasn’t just her problem. Ronan and Adam had been coy about what exactly they were to each other ever since the night Gansey died and then didn’t but they were definitely something. And from the sounds Ronan sometimes let out when he saw Adam, he found Adam very attractive a lot more frequently than she did. But it likely wasn’t a problem for him. Not with the way Adam smiled when he saw Ronan looking. He skirted around a child that ran across the room in front of him and slid into the booth next to Ronan. “Hey,” he greeted Ronan warmly. 

“Hey.”

Adam turned to her like he’d just now seen her. “Hey, Blue.”

Blue smirked. “Hi. You want water?”

“Please.”

Blue gave them some space while she fetched Adam’s water and tended to her paying customers. By the time she managed to get back to the table Gansey and Henry had arrived and the camaraderie she and Ronan had shared earlier was well and truly dead. 

\---

It was late and the parking lot was dark. Blue wasn’t worried about walking home, the streets never bothered her at night, but hanging around the shadows of Nino’s always creeped her out a little. Especially when there was a dark car loitering in the corner of the lot, two forms crouched around it. 

Blue would prefer to avoid it entirely but the car was next to the sidewalk Blue had to take to get home. She  _ could _ go the other way but it was at least ten minutes longer and she was tired. So with a silent huff, Blue stalked across the asphalt, careful to keep as much space between her and them as possible. Or that’s what she was planning to do before she realized she knew the car and thus the people pressed against it. Because they were, pressed against it that was. What she had mistaken for huddled figures from a distance was up close clearly two men, boys really, locked in an embrace.

Ronan was, by all accounts pretty happily, sandwiched between his car and Adam. His hands were clutching Adam’s head and keeping in place, their lips pressed together. Adam’s hands were more mobile, roaming over Ronan’s body and lifting up his shirt to reveal his bare hip.

Blue meant to keep walking, she did. She had no interest in watching her friends in an intimate moment. But the moment she turned to go, Ronan shifted and his pants slipped down his hips to an indecent degree. With Adam having pushed his shirt up, Blue was suddenly graced with the sight of a sharp hip bone, unnaturally pale skin, and the large black letters of  _ Adam Parrish _ . 

She inhaled sharply and fled. 

\---

She fully intended to go home. That was the idea, given that it was after midnight and she’d gone straight from school to Nino’s. It wasn’t altogether surprising, though, when she ended up outside of Monmouth.

The door wasn’t locked when she pushed it open. “Jane?” Gansey greeted, clearly confused but not upset about it.

Blue walked past where he sat rebuilding his Henrietta and dropped onto his bed in a graceless heap. 

“Blue?” Gansey tried again. He had stood up and was now hovering next to the bed. “Is everything alright?”

Blue turned her head so she wasn’t speaking into the pillow. “What do you think about the soulmarks?”

Gansey sat down next to her. “Why do you ask?”

“I don’t know.” She tried to shrug. When that didn’t work she rolled over onto her back and stared up at the ceiling. “I’ve never really put much stock into them, you know? I mean, they’re  _ there _ , can’t really deny that. But I’ve never really felt that they had to mean something. Like, why should my skin tell me how to feel!” Gansey hummed encouragingly when she paused. “I’ve never actually known anyone who found their marked. I mean, sure everyone knows someone who has, but not anyone I really  _ know _ , you know?”

“Jane, what is this about?” Gansey asked quietly.

Blue flopped her hands in the air. “I don’t know!” She groaned. “What if they  _ do  _ mean something? What if I’m supposed to, I don’t know, listen to them?” Gansey ran a finger over the  _ Blue Sargent _ on the back of his hand.

“You think they don’t mean anything?”

“No!” Blue sat up. “Not nothing. Just- not everything? They’re like a guideline or whatever, right? Like the universe’s way of saying, hey this person is gonna be important! Pay attention!” She stuck a hand into her armpit and let the backs of her fingers brush against the  _ Richard Campbell Gansey III _ they found there. The silence dragged on. “Does it have to be romantic? Does it have to be-”

“It doesn’t have to be anything, Jane,” Gansey told her. “You’re right. It’s just the universe telling us who will be most important to us. What we do with that knowledge is up to us.”

Blue stared down at the  _ Henry Cheng _ on the back of his left hand. The font matched the  _ Henry Cheng _ scrawled up her left arm. “I think-” she stopped. “I think I’ve been avoiding it. Because I didn’t want the marks to be right.”

“The marks are never wrong.”

Blue rolled her eyes. “I know that. Everybody knows that. You know what I mean.”

Gansey didn’t say anything at first. Then, “pretend I don’t.”

“I didn’t want to love you, either of you, just because of the marks.”

“And do you?”

Blue shook her head.

“Then I don’t see the problem.” Neither did Blue, really. And maybe that was her problem. She’d spent most of her life railing against her marks and now she found herself at peace with them. It was slightly disconcerting but not necessarily in a bad way. 

\---

Unrequited marks were rare. They existed but they made up less than 1% of the population.

Ronan spent two weeks terrified that he was one of those unfortunate bastards. Adam Parrish, a name he knew better than his own, showed up in his Latin class one day and Ronan just knew he’d found his mate. It was entirely possible, of course, that this Adam Parrish was not the Adam Parrish on his skin but Ronan  _ knew _ . For two weeks , he analyzed Adam’s every movement, waiting for the sign that Adam had Ronan’s name, that he recognized him. 

Adam gave away nothing. It was like Ronan didn’t exist, as a name or as a person.

Then, Gansey decided to befriend Adam. Ronan was torn between wanting to dance with joy at getting to speak to his soulmate and killing Gansey for his interference, however ignorant it may have been, when Adam sat down across from him at lunch. Adam looked up, met his eyes, and in the three seconds that he held Ronan’s gaze, Ronan knew their marks were reciprocated. He also knew, when Adam looked away dismissively, that Adam planned to do absolutely nothing about it.

Which was fine. A lot of people, particularly those his age, tended to ignore the marks. Just because Ronan had waited breathlessly for the chance to meet his mate didn’t mean Adam had. Ronan had to respect that.

Turns out, Ronan was really bad at respecting it. He couldn’t bring himself to start a conversation over it so he started fights about literally everything else. It wasn’t what he wanted but it got Adam to look at him and talk to him so Ronan kept at it.

But somehow, slowly, their fights changed. They yelled less and talked more. Ronan stopped trying to hide when Adam caught him looking. Adam started looking back. 

It was progress. 

Right up until his world was torn apart and he had nothing left to lose so he kissed Adam. And Adam kissed him back.

It was weeks after that before Adam asked to see the mark. Weeks in which Ronan stopped himself from asking the same question nearly every day. They both knew their marks were there but they’d never once talked about it and Ronan refused to be the one to break the silence.

Adam’s name was scrawled across his hip, low enough and close enough to his groin that it would never be seen accidentally. When he trailed his fingertips across it, gently tracing the thick lines, Ronan felt like he was on fire, Adam’s touch burning in just the right kind of way. When Adam was satisfied, he shoved his own pants down without hesitation. Ronan watched, mystified as his boxers quickly followed. 

Ronan had imagined this moment several times over. What he hadn’t anticipated, however, was to completely bypass Adam’s anatomy in favor of staring at the  _ Ronan Lynch _ that curved around the inner junction of Adam’s thigh and groin. 

“No one else gets to see that right?” 

Adam glared. “No, I walk around showing it off to everyone I meet.”

Ronan grinned. His fingers were already outstretched, the tips just grazing the R. Adam shuddered above him as he traced his name. 

After that, Ronan had to work hard to restrain himself. Now that he knew where Adam’s mark was, his fingers itched to trace the letters at all times. He’d feel worse about it if Adam wasn’t just as bad. Since Ronan’s was slightly more accessible than Adam’s, Adam had taken to sitting close to him and slipping a finger under Ronan’s waistband and stroking the top of the mark under the cover of the table. 

It was worse when he did it at Nino’s. Ronan was a poor conversationalist at the best of times but Adam’s fingers down his pants rubbing his mark was not them. He barely spoke a word once Adam got started, unable to do anything other than count the minutes until they could leave. So of course it was just his luck that Gansey and Henry wanted to spend hours regaling them with the mind numbing details of whatever project they were working on this week. 

Ronan heard none of it. If Adam had been blocking him from escaping out of the booth he would’ve left hours ago and dragged Adam with him. As it stood, he was at Adam’s mercy.

Finally, after the rest of the restaurant had cleared out, one of Blue’s coworkers literally shooed them from the restaurant and locked the door behind them. Gansey kept talking all the while.

“You coming back to Monmouth?” Gansey asked when he finally took a breath. 

“No,” Ronan replied before Adam could say anything. It wasn’t unusual for them to go to Monmouth on the weekends, but right now Ronan would rather kiss Chainsaw than spend another minute with their friends. “We’ll come by tomorrow.” 

Henry smirked as Gansey waved goodbye when Ronan pulled Adam across the empty parking lot to where he’d left his car. 

When they reached it, Ronan pushed Adam’s back against it. “Why?” He definitely didn’t whine.

Adam shrugged. “Why not?” There was a wicked gleam in his eyes. Ronan only had a moment to appreciate it before Adam switched their positions and pressed their lips together. 

Ronan legitimately lost track of time after that. The only indication that time had passed at all was the cool air hitting his bare torso when Adam lifted his shirt and the way his pants started sagging when Adam unzipped them. He stopped caring once Adam got his whole hand on his mark. 

He still had to wait until they got back to the Barns to return the favor.

\---

“So.” Blue hopped up on the kitchen island, a gleam in her eye. 

Ronan glared at her. Nothing good ever came from that look or that tone. He grunted.

“You and Adam.”

“What about us?” Ronan turned to face the sink, his back to Blue. He and Adam still hadn’t quite had the discussion about what they were and they definitely hadn’t talked about it with anyone else yet but their friends weren’t stupid. He was surprised it had taken this long for one of them to say something.

“Hey,” Blue said softly. She kicked at him until he turned around. “I’m happy for you.”

Ronan raised an eyebrow. “Thanks?”

She smiled and kicked out again, this time her foot brushed his hip just to the right of his mark. “Happily ever after?”

Ronan scowled. Blue grinned. “We’re working on it.” He poked at her arms. “How about you?”

“We’re working on it.”

Ronan huffed and turned back to the sink, silently ending the discussion.

“So.” Ronan groaned out loud. “Tyler Blackburn. Thoughts?”

Ronan peered over his shoulder at her. “Yes.”

“ _ Yes _ ,” Blue agreed. They nodded solemnly at each other before Blue glanced down the hall at the empty living room. “Do we have time for some Pretty Little Liars before Adam gets here?”

Ronan checked his watch before drying his hands. “Yes.”


End file.
